A MURDER IN CONGO, PART 3
DB: So here you have a Tutsi military invasion, the ruthless and violent
displacement of a million Hutus, and then two Hutu Presidents are
assassinated. The Hutu leaders responded by trying to eradicate the Tutsi
population which they saw as a Fifth Column poised to attack.
In 1996, another Hutu President of Burundi was ousted in a coup by Pierre
Boyuya, a Tutsi. Subsequently, Hutus have been interned in Burundi, put into
camps in terrible conditions. Nobody has talked about these actions, but all
of it together has created an environment of great mistrust in the region.
And now the Rwandan and Ugandan forces have attacked Congo with strong
support from Burundi. All three are Tutsi-dominated.
This has dragged Southern Africa in. Neoliberal states like Zambia are trying
to bring "peace." That should be put in quotation marks because what they
want is a neoliberal peace that would justify the Rwandan-Ugandan invasion.
Meanwhile states like Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola have mobilized on the
other side, defending Congolese sovereignty. And this all brings in South
Africa, with its internal factions that are pro-neoliberal and
anti-neoliberal, saying different things, giving mixed signals.
Parenthetically, this is similar to the situation in Yugoslavia now. Some
factions don't want to the country to go neoliberal so quickly and others
want it to go as quickly as possible, so the question becomes who is
implementing the program and where will they try to take it. But it is
important to recognize that in all these conflicts there is this neoliberal
line that is driving a specific ideological vision in these different
regions, trying to impose the neoliberal vision. This is the case whether it
is in Africa, or southern Europe, or Southern Asia. Even if there is a chance
for peace that peace will be sabotaged if it does not include neoliberal
domination. Only the establishment of neoliberal policies makes peace
acceptable to Washington. That is why the peace in Bosnia was sabotaged in
1992. And that is why all the African peace-making efforts have been
sabotaged. The key thing is to see the United States as the sole arbiter of
conflict, as the only power able to bring peace to the world by installing
those allied with the U.S. economically and politically. And that is why they
have tried to marginalize the African peace-making efforts. They want to see
their peace prevail.
Jared: The problem is, the peace installed by the U.S. means war.
DB: Their peace means war or for a war-weary population that is under
occupation, like the people of Bosnia, it means colonial administration; it
means misery; it means economic deprivation and it means long-term suffering
and it means complete disempowerment of the population because the state, the
post-conflict state is put under multilateral trusteeship, basically, with
control of the country's finances, its military and its very sovereignty in
the hands of neoliberal technocrats.
Jared: Who in turn are answerable to -?
DB: Who in turn are answerable to financial circles in New York, Frankfort,
and London. The end of sovereignty
***.
Further reading and further thoughts:
(1) An informative comment on the shooting of Congo President Laurent Kabila
appeared in today's 'Christian Science Monitor.' The quote is from one
Hannelie de Beer, described as a "senior researcher at the Institute for
Strategic Studies in South Africa." The proper name is the 'Institute for
Security Studies'. While expressing the opinion that Mr. Kabila was probably
shot because he "was losing the support of his generals" and therefore ''Any
replacement for Kabila would be 'a leader that agrees with the way the
generals want to proceed. This conflict could just draw out and continue,'"
Ms. de Beer cannot restrain her distaste for Mr. Kabila:
"If Kabila is dead, Ms. de Beer says peace could in fact be closer. 'His
attitude toward the international community was really an obstacle to peace,'
she says, describing Kabila as 'belligerent and rude.' 'Maybe a new president
will handle this whole thing more tactfully. It will depend on who becomes
the next president,' de Beer adds." ('The Christian Science Monitor', January
18, 2001)
I did a little checking and found that the Institute for Security Studies has
among its main funders the Hanns Seidel Foundation of Germany (closely allied
with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church) and our old friend, the Open
Society Foundation of George Soros. And indeed, the reports of the institute
offer generous helpings of Open Society rhetoric, starting with the constant
use of the term "civil society" which really means "neoliberal groups under
Western control." (See http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/ASR/6.1/Editorial.html )
The point is that Mr. Kabila was not liked in Western power circles. We have
separately posted an interview that Mr. Kabila gave in November, 1998. While
this interview appears to gloss over his initial alliance with Rwanda and
Uganda, and may be overly generous about his motives, it certainly makes
clear why the U.S. would find Kabila's switch to an independent stance highly
undesirable. From the grand heights of the Imperial perspective, Kabila
definitely did not know his place. "Billigerent and rude"? Indeed, downright
uppity.
(To read the interview with Congo President Laurent Kabila, please go to
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/docs/kabint.htm )
(2) How do the Ugandan and Rwandan governments pay for their invasion of
Congo not to mention their debts to the IMF? As the interview above suggests,
they finance these efforts by plundering the wealth of Eastern Congo. Thus,
although these countries mine virtually no gold within their own borders:
"Between 1998 and 1999, for example, Rwanda sold at least 2.2 tons of gold to
Belgium. The war in DRC [Congo] is being financed by its own mining
resources. However, such 'self-financing' necessarily results in a subtle
arrangement between the banking institutions of the invading countries and
those of the "receiving" countries, which are supporting the government
authorities and the "Congolese" rebellion." See:
http://www.africa2000.com/UGANDA/mineralseng.html
The bitter irony of the current arrangement is that the Belgians still get to
rape the Congo, but they do it from a distance, working through Rwanda and
Uganda.
(3) To get some idea of the history of the Tutsi-Hutu division, see part 1 of
"Ten Years of Suffering" which can be read at
http://www.fespinal.com/espinal/english/visua/en93.htm#2 . This text is by no
means the final word; it has a somewhat pro-Western bias. But it is helpful
in understanding Hutu-Tutsi divisions.
(4) Last February, the 'National Post' published a most interesting story on
the shooting down of the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi
in 1964. The story, which suggested that Tutsi forces had shot down the
Presidents' plane, was picked up by 'Associated Press' but apparently was not
covered by the U.S. or British press.
The 'AP' commented that this story:
"if verified, could have significant repercussions in the ongoing work of a
U.N. tribunal investigating the Rwandan genocide that followed Habyarimana's
killing...Defendants before the tribunal and others [have argued] that if the
plane carrying Habyarimana was shot down by Kagame's [Tutsi] RPF, then the
ensuing attacks by Hutus were more a consequence of war than a planned
genocide."
And other testimony supports the contention that the downing of the plane was
a provocation carried out by the Tutsi RPF:
"Recently come to light, on 10-08-99, is the testimony of a Rwandan military
[officer], Christophe Hakizabera, an RPF member from 1990 to 1995. When
speaking of [Hutu President] Habyarimana's assassination he says:
'"The RPF prepared a macabre plan to drive the country into chaos: the death
of President Habyarimana. He was considered to be the main obstacle to the
forceful seizure of power. The first meeting to plan the assassination was
held in Kabale (Uganda), in the Bishop's premises, under the auspices of the
Archbishop Harerimana. Later, meetings of this type were held in Mbarara, in
the home of Salim Saleh, the Major General, half brother to the Ugandan
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Then, pertinently, it is known that the
decision to assassinate President Habyarimana was taken in Bobo-Dioulasso, in
Burkina Faso in March of 1994, and that the Commander Paul Kagame, RPF
leader, participated in this meeting"'.('The African Great Lakes: Ten Years
Of Suffering, Destruction And Death' which can be read at
http://www.fespinal.com/espinal/english/visua/en93.htm#2)
Everyone agrees that ''the death of President Habyarimana was to be the spark
that would light the gunpowder thereby unleashing the killing of civilians''
(ibid.) One would imagine, therefore, that the Rwandan War Crimes Tribunal
would investigate who shot down the plane. But the 'AP' story notes that the
Rwandan War Crimes Tribunal has avoided this highly important matter:
"Tribunal officials say the mandate for their work excludes an investigation
of the crash. The National Post story said Louise Arbour, the former chief
prosecutor of the tribunal, halted the investigation into the crash for that
reason. " ('AP' March 1, 2000)
Click here to read the 'AP' Story or go to
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/docs/ap-plane.htm
In a related development, on May 30, 2000 the ICTR (Rwandan War Crimes
Tribunal) Website posted a most revealing story. Amazingly, the Tribunal
Website admited the Tribunal has a sealed document apparently linking the RPF
to the downing of the Presidential plane. Yet according to the Website, the
Tribunal refuses to release this document to a French lawyer for one of the
Hutu leaders. This despite the fact that the man's innocence or guilt is
directly related to the question of who shot down the plane. To read this
report, click here or go to http://www.emperors-clothes.com/docs/ictr.htm
(5) For general information on the role of the big mining companies in the
fighting in Central Africa, see "The Geopolitical Stakes of the International
Mining Companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Ex-Zaire)" at
http://www.africa2000.com/UGANDA/mineralseng.html
(6) For some generally quite informative links concerning Central Africa
please see the Great Lakes Press Website at
http://pages.infinit.net/glp/afrilinks.html
***
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